Reuniting the Security Council

Published: February 18, 2003

The most hawkish figures in the Bush administration never wanted to bring the Iraq issue before the United Nations. With last Friday's show of resistance in the Security Council to early military action against Baghdad, it's easy to imagine some of them saying ''I told you so,'' and urging President Bush to bypass the Council and prepare for an invasion joined only by Britain and a narrow coalition of smaller nations. That would be a damaging mistake.

Walking away from the U.N. and important European allies over this issue is not in America's long-term interests. Iraq's unconventional weapons aren't a uniquely American problem, but an international one. And while the United States does not need broad international support to prevail on the battlefields of Iraq, it will need plenty of help from Europe and the Arab world in managing the consequences of military action, including rebuilding Iraq.

As some of President Bush's aides suggested over the weekend, Washington needs to begin rebuilding lost support in the Security Council by spelling out the substantive steps Baghdad must take in the next few weeks to stay the threat of war. As we have argued before, the Council needs to pass a new resolution. It should incorporate these benchmarks and declare that failure to achieve them by a specific date would put Iraq in further material breach of its obligations, exposing it to the serious consequences that a unanimous Security Council warned of last November. Given Saddam Hussein's history of defiance and evasion, that is the only route that holds out any hope of inducing Iraq to disarm and avoiding war.

The resolution should specify the crucial forms of cooperation that Iraq continues to withhold, and without which inspections will remain futile. For example, weapons inspectors must be able to question Iraqi scientists privately, without the presence of government minders. Baghdad must remove the remaining restrictions it has placed on reconnaissance flights by U-2 and other spy planes. The illegal extended-range missiles recently discovered by the inspectors must be verifiably destroyed.

Although the two chief inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, declined to say so publicly on Friday, without these steps inspections are not achieving much. One of the most frustrating aspects of Friday's Security Council session was the implication by France's foreign minister, Dominque de Villepin, that inspections were already working, and given enough time could successfully disarm Iraq without further coercive diplomacy. What this conveniently forgets is that without the coercive diplomacy of the past few months there would now be no inspections at all, let alone the limited cooperation on mostly procedural issues that the inspectors reported to the Security Council last week. Encouragingly, that point was recognized yesterday in a declaration by all 15 European Union leaders.

It would be a mistake not to recognize that French, German and other diplomats opposing an immediate resort to force are acting not simply out of personal pique and resentment of American power. Antiwar demonstrations across the world last weekend revealed widespread public misgivings. Many people who don't dispute that Saddam Hussein is a brutal tyrant and acknowledge his record of building fearsome weapons and deceiving U.N. inspectors still feel that the case for urgent military action has not yet been persuasively made. Significantly, Europe's biggest demonstrations were in Britain, Spain and Italy, the three countries whose leaders have shown the most inclination to join Washington in military action. Large majorities in America as well as Europe say they want military action against Iraq to proceed only with Security Council endorsement.

Mr. Bush should heed these views and work with the Security Council to win support for a new resolution. The potential consequences of war with Iraq are far too serious to take on without broad international and domestic support.